14 DAY TRIAL // The new Doom game that's currently in development at id Software needs to reinvent itself and prove that the franchise is still fun, according to publisher Bethesda, which hopes to repeat the success it had with Wolfenstein: The New Order a few months ago.
The Doom series ushered in the reign of the first-person shooter genre, but it's been sorely missing from the picture for quite some time, after internal turmoil at developer id Software.
However, publisher Bethesda still has high hopes for the series and believes that the next Doom game that's going to be presented for the first time at the QuakeCon event later this month will once again put the franchise back on the podium.
Bethesda's Pete Hines believes that Doom is in the same spot Wolfenstein was in before the release of The New Order, which successfully rebooted the whole experience.
"The last couple of games were either 'ok' or 'not great'. It wasn't a franchise where people were desperate for the next one. Wolfenstein isn't Uncharted. We knew this would take some explaining. But developer Machine Games has now untarnished the IP," Hines told MCV, via CVG.
"We view that similarly to Wolfenstein, because it's been so long since the last Doom game. We are going in as if we need to prove ourselves all over again. We have no free passes. Nobody will assume this is going to be awesome."
Hines emphasizes that id and Bethesda need to prove that the new Doom game can deliver a fun experience and not go in believing that fans will of course pay for the game and promote it to their friends just because of the Doom name.
"We are going to have to prove that this is something that's going to be fun and different that you need to pay attention to. That has to be our default position, we can't be: 'It's Doom, of course you're going to play it'. But that just makes us work harder."
Doom's development has been shaken, according to quite a few reports, by issues with the management of id Software, but it seems that in recent months things have been going pretty smoothly.
Access into a Doom beta stage was promised to all those who pre-ordered Wolfenstein: The New Order, but it's still unclear just when the test phase will actually debut. Expect to hear something about it at QuakeCon later this month.